Hickory Dickory Dock
by Rahmi
Summary: Someone breaks the Clock of Eclipses and Felix wants to know how.


_Doctrine of Labyrinths/Kingdom Hearts crossover set before Riku found Roxas the first time. This was a cliche fic challenge for "First Person."_

When word reached Grimglass of what had occurred, I had left Mildmay behind.

"I don't need a wet-nurse," I said.

Mildmay's face had taken on that particular stony look that meant he was smiling at me. "Since when?" he'd asked.

"Indictions, at least," I said, deliberately using the Lower City slang.

A snort was my only answer. He turned away to busy himself with the newest books I'd bought and I found myself wanting to reach out to touch the fox-fire spill of his hair. Such urges were coming less and less frequently. I was glad.

In the end, he stayed behind while I traveled back to Esmer. What I found there was shocking, to say the least. A boy had the entire Institution up in arms. A boy who looked like he might have been Corbie's height, if a little heftier. Curious silver hair that belied the very young face that turned up at me when I took a morbid look, and a blindfold tied tightly around his eyes.

Certainly, he didn't look like a big enough threat that he had to be chained, shivering in the Nullify.

That was, he did not look like a threat until they deigned to tell me what he did.

"You broke the Clock of Eclipses," I said.

The boy tilted his face as though he could see me. "It was filthy," he said. I could not place his accent, though years of listening to Mildmay let me make out the words easily. The chains rattled when he shifted on the floor; his legs were long and ungainly. A child. He opened his mouth and breathed, nose wrinkling. "They used you to start it."

I was badly startled, for only an instant. "How would you know that?" I asked.

"It smelled like you," the boy said, shrugging in a way that reminded me eerily of my brother. "It was spewing darkness everywhere and it was _foul_, so I turned it off and locked it."

"Darkness?"

The boy's face lifted again. I had the disconcerting thought that he was truly staring at me instead of pointing his face towards my voice as Kay did. "Pain. Death. Rape. Darkness. The bad stuff."

"We call it mikkary," I said. "It's what lingers."

"Yeah. That. I sealed it so it couldn't pump out anymore of it. I smelled it two worlds away." The boy tucked his hands up under his armpits and pulled his knees to his chest. "Are you gonna let me go now?"

"The Circle will want to perform the binding-by-obedience," I answered truthfully, "Before they let you go." I was almost sure he was annemer. The spectators to the Clock of Eclipses's downfall had said nothing about magic being involved, and though I knew how reliable spectators could be, there would have been embellishments. Not silence.

It was hard to believe that an annemer would have the power necessary to stop a Titan clock, though. It's very mikkary kept it safe from the more mundane ways of destruction. I had never heard of one just stopping as the one in Bernatha had. I had never heard of any single wizard having the sheer power to stop a Titan clock in its tracks.

The ticking of the clock had induced twelve more suicides in the year it had been active. This boy had come out of nowhere to turn it off and the Institution needed to know how. I needed to know how.

He surged suddenly to his feet. "I'm not obeying anyone," he said, deadly, and pressed one palm against the wall behind him.

I could not imagine what he thought he was doing. I stood patiently in front of him and watched.

"That's always been your problem," a voice said. The person came up on my right side, a blur of black and red, and I jerked back with a hiss. Why had I insisted on Mildmay staying behind?

The man is tall, taller than even I am, with wild red hair that almost puts Mildmay's to shame. I wondered if he were Troian as well, except that in some indescribable way he looked as _other_ as the boy did.

Something about him sets my teeth on edge.

He ignored me and stepped in front of the boy, one hand rising to tug lightly on the blindfold. "You lost your coat, huh? I felt you light up this world like a spark in, well, a world full of black. Sloppy, sloppy, Riku."

Riku snarled. "Don't touch me!" The hands that came up to swat at the man are thin and fine boned. A child's. I don't know why this bothered me so much, but it did. No child had the kind of raw power, let alone the knowledge, to stop a Titan clock. "Don't touch me!"

I knew the desperation in that tone. I had wanted to use it constantly on Malkar.

"Ah, oops, my bad." The man dropped his hand and took a step back. "Do I still smell like the Superior? Yeah, I can see why you'd be a little twitchy about that. Just like he's a little twitchy about _you_ right now. You know he was going to send Luxord out here to play with that Clock you just locked, right?"

"Good," Riku said.

The man waved a finger in his face. Riku jerked back away from it hard enough his head connected with the wall behind him. "Not so good for you, actually, especially if Luxord _had_ been the one to find you."

He turned suddenly to me. "You guys just into bondage or something?" he asked. He, I noticed abruptly, did have tattoos, though they told me nothing of where he'd come or what magic he practiced. "The way I figure it, you sort of owe the brat for getting rid of your clock before, well. Before I could use it to drive most of you to suicide, actually. That Clock was awesome."

"Axel," the boy said. "Go away."

"Ah, and I was gonna give you a present too." Axel turned his back on me like I wasn't a threat at all. My stiff fingers curled as well as they could into fists. I couldn't use magic here, not in the Nullify, but I sorely wanted to blast that smirk off his face.

He flicked out another coat, identical to the one we'd taken from the boy, and laid it on the ground. "You get free and you're welcome to that, alright? Don't say I never did anything for you, kid."

"Go away," Riku said again, sounding exhausted. "Unless you're going to tell me where he is, _go away._"

For the first time, Axel lost his smile. "That's my best bud you're talkin' about," he said. "You're lucky I'm not setting you on fire and watching you burn. Be a little more grateful."

Riku leaned his head back against the wall and laughed. It was not a pleasant sound; it reminded me of Mildmay's smiles, in a way. "You don't have a heart," Riku said, "You can't have a best friend. You can't have _my_ best friend. _Go away._"

"I'm going," Axel said. "Ungrateful little brat."

A step was all it took to take me to the doorway. One foot beyond it, I felt my magic well back in me and smiled, viciously. "Darling," I purred, "How _are_ you planning on doing that?" I'd had enough of standing around. I wanted answers. I needed answers.

The Clock had been revived with my pain and my humiliation. I needed to know how it had been turned off.

Axel gave me a single bored look. "Like this," he said. Darkness bloomed in front of me and, as I recoiled from it, Axel gave me a single, chilling smile. "Got it memorized?" He continued walking towards me. Then he was simply gone, the darkness collapsing on itself as if it had never been.

Noirant magic.

Riku was watching me when I looked up, and I was sure all of a sudden that he was, indeed, watching me. The blindfold was not a hindrance in the slightest. "Sorry," he said with a grimace, "He's. Yeah. I'm gonna go now too."

"How did you stop the Clock?" I asked again through numb lips. I had never seen noirant magic worked like that. I had never seen a spell worked like that at all. It had seemed like instant transportation. That wasn't possible.

"It had a lock," Riku said. I'm not surprised to see his ankle free when I look up. The weapon in his hand is fantastical and impractical. All I can think is that Mildmay would hurt himself laughing imaging that weapon in a battle.

It seemed the Nullify was not so fail-safe as the Circle would like to believe.

"A lock," I echoed like a lackwit.

The boy looked up at me, his strange silver hair catching on his blindfold. "A... I guess it's a metaphysical lock. Someone unlocked it with _your_ pain and..." he tactfully trailed off.

I was torn between being grateful and furious.

"They unlocked it. All I had to do was re-lock it." He tilted his blade out towards me. The sweeping wing was startlingly white even in the torchlight, the blue on its hilt glowing softly. "A keyblade can lock anything. It can't be unlocked again, unless you have another keyblade."

He paused for a moment, raking his hair back with his free hand. "If you see a short blond kid who has two of these, stop him, alright? You don't want him unlocking anything he finds here."

It cost me nothing to agree to what the boy was saying. I had a horrible suspicion that he knew far more than I ever would about these locks and at the same time far less. I wanted to ask him about architectural thaumaturgy of his weapon, or the thaumaturgical effects his acquaintance had so carelessly manipulated to do something impossible.

Riku offered me a half smile. I held my tongue. "I locked the Heart of this world," he said, "So you shouldn't have any problems with heartless. Just. This world is so _dark._ You need to do something about that before you attract the Organization again."

He was gone before I could decipher that. More noirance, though curiously clean. I stood in the room and stared after him. Almost clairant, like it had become purer just by passing through the boy's palms.

I had more questions than answers and I was thoroughly annoyed at the same time.

The next time Mildmay asked me my thoughts on other worlds, I decided, I would have to tell him I'd changed my mind.


End file.
